


I Won't Love You

by Dr_Chalk



Category: One Piece
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Child Abuse, Character Study, Child Abuse, Gen, I love Reiju's complexity and it shows, Introspection, Vinsmoke Judge please come to the principal's office for being the nastiest piece of garbage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 17:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20877734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Chalk/pseuds/Dr_Chalk
Summary: It's difficult to love brothers that think blood and violence are the highest form of comedy.It's even more difficult to love a crybaby who is nothing but noisy and helpless dead weight.(It's so easy to love him that it hurts.)





	I Won't Love You

Reiju decided that she will not love her little brothers.

They were horrible, the lot of them. Those tiny, bib-wearing devils who could crumble bricks like they were nothing in their chubby palms. Little demons running around, punching soldiers in the stomach to follow it up with a babyish giggle. No, her little brothers were not human; she could not (she refused to) convince herself otherwise. Not when they were moving in ways no baby should be able to right before her eyes, all while adorning their chubby cheeks with grins that dripped of malice. Their grins were toothy slits drawn across baby fat, and should she even be referring to those as grins?

Reiju looked to her feet, discovering the messy red stain of a recently crushed squirrel. It was vivid against the green pallet of grass, a deliberately ostentatious work of art designed to captivate. Crushed beneath baby blue socks, and it was the doing of a blue-haired baby boy who could not even find it in his capacity to speak intelligibly yet. Making a face, she slid the offending carcass away with a push from the tip of her shoe. Crimson smudges appeared where the squirrel had touched her shoe, the stain against the pink just as eye-catching as the body against the grass.

Sanji wandered in with a silly smile, waddling as he held a plastic bucket and a small shovel in his hands. His eyes grew comically wide at the sight of the squirrel bits, and began to wail and cry in that noisy way only babies did. It was incessant and annoying, he was going way overboard as usual. It was just a dead squirrel, that was all it was; the waterworks were completely unnecessary. Tears, snot, and saliva ran down his face in gross and slimy cascades, and Reiju huffed in disgust before taking out a handkerchief to wipe down the revolting mixture.

(It was not just a dead squirrel, and Reiju was glad that at least somebody had the heart to cry for it. She selfishly loved it when Sanji cried like this; it was euphonic in a backwards way that she knew she shouldn’t enjoy. Nobody else in Germa cried like this, nobody else cried out of empathy that carved them raw and stole their smiles.)

* * *

Reiju decided that she will not love Sanji.

It was like betting on a racehorse you knew had no chance of winning. Emotional and monetary investment in a losing racehorse was idiotic and unrewarding, was it not? Even now, she was watching as Yonji grabbed Sanji by the back of his head and drove the weaker boy’s nose into the fancy patterns of the wall, smearing it with blood and mucus. Sanji’s body fell to the floor with a pathetic flop, and Niji immediately jumped and landed on Sanji’s back with two hard heels kicking down. The following snap and scream told Reiju that surely, those were at least two ribs that were now broken. Ichiji then kicked the limp body back into the wall, earning a blood-mixed cough from Sanji and sharp laughter from Reiju. The broken ribs had likely punctured something important. Probably a lung, seeing as how Sanji was wheezing and gasping like a fish out of water, a creature out of its habitat.

See? Losing racehorse.

Not long after her other little brothers left trailing cackles behind them in echoes, the medics came rushing in a panic to scoop up Sanji’s bloodied, twitching form. By tomorrow morning, Sanji would be back in tip-top shape, good as new through the power of technology and fresh for another beating. Tomorrow morning, Sanji would be without any wounds or scars on his skin, as if nothing had happened at all, as if nothing was wrong. And then, Sanji would greet her discreetly in passing with a soft smile, as if he had any time and effort to spare for her.

Tomorrow morning, Reiju would once again turn the other cheek to the losing racehorse. 

(She was getting too invested in this losing racehorse. She was wiping its tears and bandaging its wounds when they were light enough to patch up with a simple kit. She was not telling it that its brothers were designed to be horrible and apathetic because if it knew, its heart would surely begin bleeding for them and heaven knew it could afford to spare blood. She wanted it to stop seeking approval and care from its brothers and father, who would be all too glad to watch it get buried alive, asphyxiate, then rot six feet under.)

* * *

Reiju tried to decide not to love her father.

Her father watched Sanji throw up blood and bile, the mixture swirling to form the most putrid puddle, and let it all play out with ice plastering the corners of his lips. Her father could see a bloodied and battered Sanji collapsed against the wall where his brothers had left him, and would not even blink at his own son’s whimpered pleas for help. He once saw Niji bash Sanji’s head into salad tongs repeatedly, each blow tearing ragged cuts through Sanji’s forehead and eyelids, and did not even lift a finger despite the agonized wails bursting from the far side of the dining table.

Reiju didn’t either. 

Like father like daughter, she supposed.

She wanted to stop loving her father. She wanted to rip away the artificial loyalty sewn into her heart, toss it on the ground and step on it over and over again until it was nothing but fragments and shards dirtied by muddy shoes. It was a dog’s blind loyalty towards its owner that had been forced into her, an undying faith woven from strings of code. She watched Sanji cry in his sleep as he lay on the infirmary bed, the pained creases on his face slowly smoothing away as fentanyl flowed into his system through the IV drip. She intently observed the blood crusting around his split lips, the swirl of purple and yellow over his left eyelid, the stream of crimson clotting beneath his nose, the jagged spike of a broken femur jutting out of his right thigh, and was disappointed to find that she would still give her life for Judge at the drop of a hat if he asked her of it. 

If Sanji had even an ounce of her special flavor of bitterness, then she was sure that Sanji would avoid her at every possible turn. Unfortunately, he didn’t. 

(She was glad that he didn’t avoid her, even if most of their encounters ended with her feigning high-pitched laughter that raked painfully at the layers of her own eardrums. His kind words of sincere gratitude when she patched him up were everything to her, now that her mother wasn’t around to whisper to her honey-sweet affection. Sometimes, when she patched Sanji up, she let her fingertips linger on Sanji’s bruised flesh a little longer than she should have, just to revel in the fact that his skin didn't feel like iron.)

* * *

Reiju realized that she couldn’t help but love Sanji.

Sanji didn’t smile very often, while Reiju wore her smile like armor. She smiled as she observed Sanji sneak off with carefully picked flowers to their mother’s grave, while Reiju stood as still as a rock, her grip feeling extremely empty with the lack of flowers clutched tightly in it. She smiled as Yonji kicked Sanji’s head into the corner of smooth marble to leave bloodstains on the gravestone, all while not even sparing a glance at Reiju and her lack of reverently held flowers. Still smiling, Reiju would take one step closer, because how dare Yonji leave bloodstains on the perfect and pristine gravestone. How dare he knock Sanji’s skull against it and crack both the base of the stone and her brother’s brittle bones, how dare he make Sanji smile even less.

Sanji didn’t smile often, but— 

On the rare occasions that he smiled, however, he made the stony castles warm. When he smiled and his golden hair framed his face, when his eyelashes caught the rays of sun and his blue eyes twinkled like the ocean’s surface during sunrise—

He looked painfully like mother.

Shame, how smiles couldn't be seen behind iron masks.

Not that Sanji really had any cause to smile with that mask on his face, anyway.

Nothing changed, not really. Sanji was still the losing racehorse he had always been, dreaming impossible dreams that were both too big and too small for him, a deprived fantasist whose eyes could be set aflame with something as small and meager as a book. He was a crybaby with volatile tear ducts, he was going to rewrite history on his paper-thin skin. He was going to laugh brighter, dream louder, he was a losing racehorse but Reiju _loved_ _him so much _and his hooves were going to skim the surface of the ocean, an ocean as blue as the eyes made crystalline by his tears— 

Blue was his favorite color. Blue was the color of the ocean that gave flare to his eyes with a mere mention. Blue was their mother’s eyes, her hospital gown, the ribbon of her dress back when she could wear something other than hospital gowns, blue was their mother and if the product of their mother’s everything was Sanji then he was the richest ultramarine that belonged anywhere but here.

He was a losing racehorse, and he needed a different field to gallop through. 

And yet he didn’t even know how to get there by himself.

How weak. She really had to do everything for him.

(She pushed her losing racehorse out into the broad sea, and screamed at him to run. She told her losing racehorse that he will discover people who find him worthy of their love, no matter how many races he lost. She cried for her losing racehorse, her baby brother, the only brother she could find it in herself to consider human. A brother she scorned for being a crybaby, only to wipe his tears. A brother she neglected for his weakness, only to patch him up. A brother she tried not to love, only to end up loving him more. A brother who was now running out into the open blue, his sobs loud and grating and reeking of freedom, and Reiju was never going to see him ever again. She loved him, and she wanted him to stay in this hell to continue being her only remaining source of warmth. She loved him even more than that, and so she made him run, run, run, as far away from this accursed place as possible, so that he would never have to wear iron masks rusted by his tears ever again. He was going to sing, sing, sing brighter and louder and further, and heaven forbid anyone kill the joy he nothing but deserved to find.)

* * *

_ She sees her little brothers for the first time, and thinks they are tiny, weird, and oddly colorful. The blue one is being carried by Epony, who quickly screams as the baby bites her fingers with unnatural ferocity and vigor. The green one has miraculously tangled itself into the frizzy hair of a handmaid Reiju did not learn the name of, the handmaid wincing as the weight of the baby pulls painfully at her hair. The red one, despite the fact that babies should very much not be able to transport themselves at the tender age of two weeks, has somehow maneuvered itself onto the ground and is currently tripping a nurse over with its lumpy body. _

_ Reiju, despite her blank face, thinks the whole scene is the peak of slapstick comedy. _

_ The ensuing hilarity must not be to her mother’s taste, because mother looks at the scene with a face that makes Reiju feel bad for ever finding humor in the ongoing antics. Her mother looks at the three boisterous babies as if she is looking at something she lost. As if the babies were dying of some incurable disease right before her eyes. Reiju does not approve of anyone who makes her mother sad, so immediately she decides these babies are bad news. _

_ The yellow baby in her mother’s arms bursts into tears, and Reiju’s hands immediately fly to her ears to block off the sound because that baby is noisy, noisier than the other three combined. Reiju half-considers blocking the baby’s mouth herself before it gets any louder in this room, and she reaches out with her right hand— _

_ Mother is smiling something so achingly gentle, radiating warmth and joy as she shushes and coddles the only baby that inherited her liquid gold hair, and suddenly the crying is not annoying but the most human and blessed thing in the world— _

_ The hand lands on the baby’s head, and she ruffles the blonde tufts experimentally. The crying dies down and Reiju almost misses the sound, but then the baby _ laughs _ , and no, she will not miss the crying, not when her little brother is letting out a sound that somehow makes everything too much and overwhelming and bright, as if outside the curtained windows are ten suns ferociously bleeding in through the gaps between fabric. _

_ “His name is Sanji,” her mother whispers gently as Reiju crawls onto the bed, one hand still entangled in soft baby hair. The baby—Sanji—wraps his tiny hand around Reiju’s thumb, and his grip is weak, it’s so weak, just the way a normal baby’s grip should be. He smiles up at her, blotchy from tears and dribble running down his chin, looking absolutely perfect in every way. _

Reiju had loved him from the start.

**Author's Note:**

> Can you tell that I love Reiju?
> 
> I will adore her complexity until the day I die, it's my favorite thing to write about ever. If my school told me to write an analysis essay on Reiju I would willingly pull an all-nighter. Anyways, the conclusion as usual is that Sora and Judge should have switched lifespans
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Please feel free to leave a comment, I'd love to read your takes on Reiju's character- or just your thoughts on the fic in general!


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